Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia - Hardcover

Wheen, Francis

3.86

425 ratings by Goodreads

9780007244270: Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007244274 ISBN 13: 9780007244270

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2009

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Review:

'delightfully unorthodox history..The strangest decade has received the treatment it has long deserved' Book of The Week Time Out

'This gallery of grotesques is great fun' TLS

'fascinating, wonderfully funny and curiously terrifying' Waterstones Books Quarterly

'wonderfully deadpan and precise writer' The Scotsman

'Wheen expertly controls the reins, pacing the narrative just right so there is always the desire to be led further into the maze of '70's madness. Wheen is surely our most eminent satirical writer, and I just hope that he is looking at our present decade through the same lens, and is just as busy getting that book ready' Tribune

'Wheen's view of the Seventies in Britain is unrelentingly grim' The Spectator

'hugely entertaining...Wheen has a tremendous sense of the absurd' Independent on Sunday

'What makes this book such an outrageously funny, entertaining read is the stream of anecdotes, from the Oz obscenity trial to the mercenary coup plotters who fly into the Seychelles posing as rugby-playing members of the fictitious Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, their weapons hidden in their luggage under piles of toys 'for disabled children'. Not even the most outrageous novelist could make this kind of stuff up, but perhaps only a writer of Francis Wheen's skill and touch could turn it into a book as glorious, memorable and laugh-out-loud hilarious as this.' Literary Review

'Wheen's high-octaine, rollicking and impressionistic survey' Mail on Sunday

‘First review of Francis Wheen's brilliant Strange Days Indeed ran at the weekend:'Wheen couldn't write a dull book if he tried...And while not even he could make the 1970s likeable, few could make the crimes, follies and misfortunes of that wretched decade so entertaining' Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.

Synopsis:

Strange Days Indeed tells the story of how the paranoia exemplified by Nixon and Wilson became the defining characteristic of western politics and culture in the 1970s. Francis Wheen will vividly evoke the characters, events and atmosphere of an era in which the truth was far stranger than even the most outlandish fiction. In 1971 Richard Nixon installed a sophisticated voice-activated recording system in the White House. Three years later he became the first US president to resign, implicated in the Watergate cover-up by the evidence of his own tapes. But they revealed far more than that. 'Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general -- these are the enemies of strong societies,' he told his aide Bob Haldeman. 'That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they're trying to destroy us!!You know it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalising marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them?'

In the spring of 1976, weeks after resigning as the British prime minister, Harold Wilson summoned two young BBC journalists whom he scarcely knew and asked them to investigate MI5's machinations. 'I see myself as a big fat spider in the corner of the room,' he said. 'Sometimes I speak when I'm asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.' Strange Days Indeed tells the story of how the paranoia exemplified by Wilson and Nixon became the defining characteristic of western politics and culture in the 1970s -- a decade in which the leader of the British Liberal Party stood trial for conspiracy to murder and the West German chancellor discovered that his personal assistant was an East German agent. Strange Days Indeed will vividly evoke the characters, events and atmosphere of an era in which the truth was far stranger than even the most outlandish fiction.

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